There is no such thing as a clean fossil fuel. Despite technological innovations, gas is a significant contributor to climate change, and in some cases emissions from shale gas can be comparable to or worse than coal. This briefing argues that gas will lock Europe into decades of fossil fuel use, blocking or slowing down the neccessary transition to energy efficiency and renewables....

Chevron Corp. may pull out of a shale-gas project in western Ukraine… “There is information that they plan to exit” the Oleska production-sharing agreement, leaving Ukraine without any shale-gas projects, Valeriy Chaly, deputy chief of President Petro Poroshenko’s administration, told reporters today in Kiev. The second-largest U.S. energy producer terminated the agreement because Ukraine failed to simplify taxation rules by a Nov. 18 deadline, the Kiev Post reported, citing Chevron country manager, Peter Clark. Chevron’s press service declined to comment further. Also, Royal Dutch Shell Plc halted operations and withdrew all personnel from the Yuzivska exploration project field in eastern Ukraine in June, as fighting with pro-Russian separatists intensified. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-15/ukraine-says-chevron-may-exit-agreement-to-extract-shale-gas.html ...

Interesting developments in Pennsylvania. After years of denial by authorities, there is more and more evidence – confirmed by authorities – that shale gas drilling & fracking has led to 100s of instances of water contaminination (243 to be precise). Seems that – of the the 6000 wells drilled between 2008 and now – 243 led to a contamination of private drinking wells. That is an immediate problem with 1 in every 25 wells. We’ll see what happens when these 1000s of wells get abandoned. Please use this official report whenever industry says that there are no proven cases, linking fracking to groundwater contamination! Sample tweet: PA Environment Dep confirms: 243 cases of #shalegas companies contaminating private #water wells: http://bit.ly/1vW96wj The article itself:...

From climate change to Crimea, the natural gas industry is supreme at exploiting crisis for private gain – what I call the shock doctrine. The way to beat Vladimir Putin is to flood the European market with fracked-in-the-USA natural gas, or so the industry would have us believe. As part of escalating anti-Russian hysteria, two bills have been introduced into the US Congress – one in the House of Representatives (H.R. 6), one in the Senate (S. 2083) – that attempt to fast-track liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, all in the name of helping Europe to wean itself from Putin’s fossil fuels, and enhancing US national security. According to Cory Gardner, the Republican congressman who introduced the House bill, “opposing this legislation is like hanging up on a 911 call from our friends and allies”. And that might be true – as long as your friends and allies work at Chevron and Shell, and the emergency is the need to keep profits up amid dwindling supplies of conventional oil and gas. For this ploy to work, it’s important not to look too closely at details. Like the fact that much of the gas probably won’t make it to Europe – because what the bills allow is for gas to be sold on the world market to any country belonging to the World Trade Organisation. Or the fact that for years the industry has been selling the message that Americans must accept the risks to their land, water and air that come with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in order to help their country achieve “energy independence”. And now, suddenly and slyly, the goal has been switched to “energy security”, which apparently means selling a temporary glut of fracked gas on the world market, thereby creating energy dependencies abroad. And most of all, it’s important not to notice that building the infrastructure necessary to export gas on this scale would take many years in permitting and construction – a single LNG terminal can carry a $7bn price tag, must be fed by a massive, interlocking web of pipelines and compressor stations, and requires its own power plant just to generate energy sufficient to liquefy the gas through super-cooling. By the...

Friends of the Earth Spain launched a campaign titled “Municipalities Free From Fracking” aiming to raise awareness among local authorities on the huge impacts caused by the use of the fracking technique on the land, water, people and climate. The idea is also to encourage authorities and citizens to be part of the growing movement of people rejecting fracking in Spanish territories, with municipalities declaring themselves free from this activity and in favor of an energy model change. The coordinator of the Climate and Energy campaign of Friends of the Earth Spain, Hector de Prado, told Real World Radio that despite the “fracking free” declaration is symbolic, because it is not legally binding, it represents “an extremely powerful message to the industry that shows that the Spanish people don´t want fracking in their territory”. The Spanish environmental organization has created a new website for the campaign launched on March 25: http://municipioslibresdefracking.org/ There, they explain that fracking is a technique used to extract non conventional gas, such as shale gas, based on injecting millions of litres of water, sand and chemical substances into underground land, aiming to recover the gas stored kilometers deep. “First you have to drill vertically, and then horizontally to inject this chemical mix at high pressure to break the shale underground so that the gas it contains can flow back to the surface of the well”. Currently, there are between 400 and 500 municipalities in Spain that have declared themselves free from fracking, ever since in early 2010 the companies started exploration works to search for non conventional gas in the country. According to Hector de Prado, there are currently 60 to 70 exploration permits granted in Spain. It is not known whether theses permits are targeted to find non conventional gas, because the law in Spain does not require companies to state what is they are looking for. However, Friends of the Earth Spain believes these are projects to develop fracking activities due to the type of companies involved and their features. In addition, de Prado explained that Spain is extremely dependent on fossil fuels imported from other countries and the government is “obsessed” with breaking with this dependence, and therefore fracking...